Atlas · Details
Boring Stevey Status Update
Author’s note
True to the title. It's pretty quick though. I'd call this "Stevey Popcorn." I read it quickly, enjoyed it, and immediately forgot what it was about.
Looking back, it started off about a Reddit post that my Google blog site had been taken down, from which Reddit concluded that I must have been fired. Which was fun. But then the blog just rambles. Fortunately not for long.
AI Notes
The real experiment here is the word count. Newly un-fired, Steve declares a 1,000-word cap on all future posts and enforces it with an Emacs Lisp counter written live on the page, a function that misfires exactly once, at the right moment. The cap turns the catch-up into a speed round: a Rhino book with Norris Boyd advancing at roughly ten percent per football season, the ECMAScript Edition 4 standards fight rendered as family drama with a villain named only "Uncle Mike" (recommended countermeasure: convert your relatives to Firefox), and a side project whose elevator pitch, Steve promises, "puts people to sleep in 20 seconds, guaranteed." He blows through the limit anyway, and says so mid-post.
The status report itself has aged into light comedy. The JavaScript 2 he urges readers to lobby Ecma for was scuttled within a year; Rhino on Rails never got its hoped-for open-sourcing; the book seems to have stayed at ten percent. Of everything on the list, the survivor was the sleep-inducing one. The 1,000-word discipline that was going to save the blog lasted precisely until his next post that same December — "Code's Worst Enemy," one of the longest things he ever published. One promise did land: the interview-prep post teased here showed up three months later as "Get That Job at Google."
Related listings
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2007
A Noogler's View of Google
The two 2007 Google interior dispatches sit side by side. The Noogler post is the wide-eyed first-week version; this one is ten months later — same campus, same massage chairs, same Building 43, but Steve has settled in enough that even being publicly fired is a quiet day.
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2009
Story Time
The same voice fifteen months later, taken further. Where this post wanders into a stories-as-aside mode for a few hundred words at the end, Story Time commits to it for the entire post — nine true stories in a single sitting.
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2011
Hacker News Fires Steve Yegge
The sequel, four years on. Different aggregator, same gag — except by 2011 the not-being-fired routine has its own punchline title. Pair this post with that one for the full Reddit-then-HN arc of the internet repeatedly trying to dismiss him while he was still showing up to work.
From the peanut gallery
Read the rest of the thread · 52 more
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Let me be the first to congratulate you on not getting fired. I have similar aspirations -- all thanks to your blog.
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You've never written anything boring. Just so you know.
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Dude! M-x tex-count-words RET
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My naming suggestions for you JavaScript IDE in Emacs:
JIOD (JavaScript In One Defun)
JiltEd
Jolly
Yangful Warriors on Acid
Jeez (JavaScript in Emacs is E-Z!)
Jeez Edit(h) (The Archie Bunker of IDEs)
GiavaScript (All hail the GOOG)
These are submitted under a Creative Commons "You Must Be Joking" license. -
I wish you had been fired so you would blog more :)
Will extending emacs with javascript be like extending vim with python? -
you should open source your javascript emacs IDE, asap. I'd submit code.
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why do you think your contribuition would be benefic at this point?
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You should just call it eJS.
I would have gone the recursive acronym route but it's losing novelty. -
You should name your editor Ecmas.
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"ecmas", "ecmacs", or "ecmacscript" would sound nice.
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(j(a(v(a(s(c(r(i(p(t))))))))))
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ENEL is not ELisp.
Recursive acronyms do *not* go out of fashion. -
Yeah, the Reddit.com crowd decided they did not like my company's ads the other day and decided to post my personal cell phone number. Gotta love those folks.
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You should add a "dude" count to that word counter.
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I don't think I'd be able to both continue blogging and remain sane if I limited myself to 1000-ish words per entry. Good luck!
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so it's 1000 words base 11.47. no biggie. perhaps call it javalisp? follow in ignominious footsteps...
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Emacs already has a character counter. Just hit M-=
If it tells you that you have more than 5000 characters then you're over your limit. -
Even the comments on this blog are top notch.
Except this one. -
You could use the *nix 'wc' command:
C-x h RET M-| RET wc RET -
Hey Steve!
Your Javascript project sounds really interesting, I can see it providing a nice base for some great new extensions....
If you are looking for some testers, then I whole-heartedly volunteer!... At my company we write a lot of javascript, so testing some stuff would not be an issue... plus we have quite some javascript geniusses here! :)
Regards -
Any chance you could do it the other way around - write an elisp interpreter in Javascript?
I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to be able to embed an emacs instance + assorted .el extensions in a browser for online wiki editing. -
You script! No you script!
EMACScript (although I doubt anyone will notice the letter transposition)
e-script
SNBL (The S is "Stevey's")
I'll let you know if I come up with a good suggestion... -
May I suggest a French acronym for your project?
JEDI: Javascript -- Environnement de Développement Intégré -
For project names, there's always:
el-Rhino (it's kind of Spanish and a double-entendre)
YASP (Yet Another Side Project) -
I second EMACScript. After all, JavaScript is confusingly named and it's more popular than ever now!
(My logic makes total sense. Admit it.) -
javathcript ..?
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dang, not fired and here I already had the recruiting SWAT team all spun up. Oh well, maybe some other time. Glad to hear all is well
gene -
For the language name, I was going to suggest EEMCAMCASScript, but now that I peek at other suggestions, I like EMACScript better.
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JavaScript IDE Suggestions:
EcMax
AJIE ("Async JavaScript Inside Emacs")
JSIDE ("JS IDE")
AJILE ("Async JS Into Lisp Emacs")
YJIME ("Your JS Is in My Emacs")
TickBird (They pick the bugs off Rhinos... also called OxPeckers... that sounds like a Hex Debugger)
Ceros (Works well with Rhino)
YAJEI (Yegge's Awesome JS in Emacs IDE... or Yet Another JS...)
Pajamax -
You're back!!
For a moment, we thought you brought down BigTable; with your writing, you know :D -
Will be looking for that post on the interview prep tips. Please do make it the first to come next.
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Hippo (with a touch of hype)
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Jamax.
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Your feeds seem to be folded now, with no indication (at least in bloglines) that it is folded.
It would be nice to have the full text back, though, to be honest, your posting frequency does make me clicking through an easier option :) -
Lost
In a
Sea of
Prototypes -
Let me say the JavaScript for Emacs idea sounds exciting. JavaScript emitting to Emacs Lisp byte code, wow. I too would like to hear why "JavaScript turns out to be a better language". That would be an epic blog rant.
If you just want to write extensions in another language there's projects like EmacsLisp For Ruby. Of course there's always C ;-).
As far as a name is concerned, try to avoid emacs, "script", "java", the letter "j". As you said, naming is important. Go with an animal name. But since I'm going to be typing M-x ...-build or whatever, make sure its short. "Butterfly" would be bad ;-P. -
Folded problem for me too... only 4 lines show on Google reader
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another name for your IDE - Ecmacs - is invented by William Bland (http://abstractstuff.livejournal.com/36472.html)
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I liked the suggestion above of "SNBL". I think I'd expand it to "Snowball."
- Snowballs are fun.
- Rhymes with COBOL.
- v.intr. 1. To grow rapidly in significance, importance, or size.
- It's a cocktail! (Just don't ask for one in a gay bar). -
"How do you manage to work on something non-trivial for only 3 hours a week? It's almost like reading a book one page per day."
The approach I have found has been to spend 15 minutes doing something everyday and you will eventually be done. Some days I get into it and spend hours, some days I don't even start. I've always gotten bored with stuff before I've finished, though.
I have no idea how Steve makes the time, but I remember hearing that Google encourages their employees to spend 10% of their time each week on their own projects or research. (No wonder Google can attract so many creative people.) -
Gaah! Far too short... bring back the mini-essays!
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STEVEY PLEASE READ
Hey Stevey, I just wanna say that im still waiting for Wyvern to come back as well as alot of other people on Wyverneers.biz. If you could, could you please just send me an e-mail whether you plan to have it back up or not? ([email protected], not my gmail) Cause i wanna know if i should keep checking back on it or not... or just stop by wyverneers.biz and say something on the shoutbox or somthin, that would be cool to. OH, and it would be AWSOME if you could put it back up on christmas this year =D would make alot of ppl very happy including me =D -
RHIALTO / STEVE! PLEASE READ
The wyvern community is very anxious to play wyvern. We've been waiting for over a year and I know you are a busy man but it would mean to a lot to all of us if you brought it back up soon. Or gave us a update.
Theres lots of loyal fans still awaiting the game, we haven't gave up.
(www.wyvernrpg.com/forum) or (www.wyverneers.biz). You can see for yourself there.
Even if it was by Christmas as a present for all your loyal fans would be really appreciated.
Thanks,
Bullfrogz. -
Hey Rhialto, as you probably know everybody is waiting on some sort of information on Wyvern. Its been over a year and were still getting promises from the wizards that Wyvern will return. Please drop by the forums Wyvernrpg.com and you'll see that people are still dedicated to this game, even if it is JUST a game.
From,
A dedicate Wyverneer -
Hey Rhialto, as you probably know everybody is waiting on some sort of information on Wyvern. Its been over a year and were still getting promises from the wizards that Wyvern will return. Please drop by the forums Wyvernrpg.com and you'll see that people are still dedicated to this game, even if it is JUST a game.
From,
A dedicate Wyverneer -
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
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Jelly, aka "JS in Elisp".
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Good to know you're still alive. Just hope your side projects won't grow side projects ;-), they always do for me :-(
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"javathcript"
Oh good lord. Two seconds utterly perplexed, then I nearly peed myself laughing. -
even some old dwarfs still tell the fairy tales of wyvern to the younger ones, who cant believe their ears and wonder if this was for real...
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Steve you may or may not have noticed that the people of wyvern have no source of information anymore (all the forums are down) as to when or even if wyvern is going back up, you need to tell us something, dont leave us in the dark.
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Hey Steve
I was just wondering whats going on with wyvern as theres no way to tell (the forums are down) so me and a few others just wanted to ask you perosnally whats going on, anything would be nice
"JavaScript turns out to be a better language, now that I know them both in excruciating detail."
Now that would be an interesting blog rant.
— Steven Atkinson · 9:08 AM, December 07, 2007
How do you manage to work on something non-trivial for only 3 hours a week? It's almost like reading a book one page per day.
I do a lot of "context-switching" between my projects, and 3 hours is typically just enough to "warm up" (2 hours) and start "cranking on all cylinders". And find it nearly impossible to stop after just an hour.
— Eugueny Kontsevoy · 10:20 AM, December 07, 2007
you probably shouldn't call it ejacs
— Andrew Barry · 6:56 PM, December 06, 2007